


I Know

by Rhoa Lajak (cw151)



Series: After [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Battle of Winterfell, Romance, post 8.03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:24:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18667744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cw151/pseuds/Rhoa%20Lajak
Summary: Post Battle of Winterfell, Arya and Gendry find each other.





	1. Chapter 1

Jon was the first to arrive in the Godswood.

 

“What happened?” he panted as he held on to a tree for purchase.

 

“Arya killed the Night King. The Long Night is over,” Bran stated impassively as ever.

 

Jon gasped.

 

“Is that true?” He looked at Arya. She seemed to be in a daze and was looking around the clearing littered with dead wights and shards of ice where the White Walkers and the Night King had stood.

 

A second later, Sansa broke through the trees, Tyrion on her heels. When she saw the three of them, she let out a relieved sigh.

 

“So, you killed the Night King? Looks like we found our ‘Prince That Was Promised’,” Tyrion said to Jon with a chuckle as he kicked at a dead wight’s head with his foot.

 

Jon frowned and shook his head.

 

“Wasn’t me. Her.” He used his head to point towards Arya, who finally seemed to notice the new arrivals in the Godswood and blinked.

 

Sansa’s eyes grew wide and she was next to Arya in an instant, hugging her close.

 

“You’re incredible,” she said, beaming when she drew back.

 

Arya just let out a small breath through her nose and smiled ever so faintly. Her eyes sprang from Sansa to Bran and then to Jon. Then her eyes turned towards the castle and her face fell.

 

“Don’t worry, he lives,” Bran said. Arya looked at him fearfully.

 

“You’ll find him on the battlements,” Bran added calmly.

 

Arya nodded weakly and took off towards the castle in a light jog.

 

“Arya, wait – where is she going?” Jon asked, but Bran didn’t answer.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Gendry was digging through wights and dead bodies. The part of the battlement where Arya had been stationed, right over Winterfell’s main gate, was covered in piles of corpses as tall as him. Suddenly, he saw a piece of yellow buried underneath some skulls and hastily pulled it out.

It was the staff he’d made for Arya.

Panicked, he started throwing the dead wights that had lain on top of the staff over the wall, desperately hoping not to find her buried underneath them all.

 

He didn’t.

 

Gendry let out a shaky breath, wiped his brow with his forearm, and then let his hand sink slowly as the realization hit him.

If she hadn’t stayed here, there was only one place she would have gone.

 

He darted along the wall to the nearest staircase but when he arrived, he suddenly came face to face with who he was looking for.

 

For a moment, both of them just stared at each other. Gendry breathed a sigh of relief and smiled lightly. Arya, on the other hand, seemed to go through every possible emotion all at once. The cool façade she’d adopted since he’d met her again was gone, and instead, she was looking at him with a mixture of disbelief, fear, and relief.

 

She let out a sob.

“I killed the Night King. I snuck up on him and I killed him,” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own words.

 

A bubble of laughter came up from somewhere deep down inside of him and broke through his lips.

 

“Of course you did,” he said, shaking his head as his smile turned into a grin.

Tears filled Arya’s eyes and she bit her lip. Then, suddenly, she broke out in a wide, happy smile that Gendry hadn’t seen on her in a long time.

“I killed the Night King,” she said once more, her voice raspy and her eyes shining brightly. Gendry nodded, still grinning.

Within a second, Arya headed straight towards him and reached up to pull his forehead to hers.

Gendry closed his eyes and sighed.

 

“Gods, I love you.”

 

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. But if Arya had heard him, she gave no sign of it. Instead, she just pulled him down into a feverish kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

Gendry swung his hammer and brought it down hard on the sword he was mending. He had no idea who it had been who’d bought him the apprenticeship with Tobho Mott when he was little, and if that someone had known how well forging suited him. But from the first time he’d picked up a hammer, he’d known that forging things from iron and steel was what he was meant to do. He loved the heat, the strength and devotion required to shape a piece just right, and how his work would turn a crude, plump piece of ore into an intricate weapon, piece of armour, or tool in the end.

 

He also liked that iron never complained, no matter how hard he hit it. And he was hitting his current piece hard. Very hard.

 

Because he was angry.

 

He was alone in the forge. Everyone else was in the Great Hall. After a week of dragging corpses out into the fields in front of the castle and countless pyres, along with the most important repairs, Winterfell was finally in a state that allowed for a break. The break consisted of a feast in honour of “The Princess That Was Promised.”

 

That was what Arya was now. She’d killed the Night King and ended the Long Night. She’d saved the Seven Kingdoms, and Gendry could not have been prouder of or happier for her.

 

He certainly wasn’t the only one who admired her. Word had spread quickly of the Battle of Winterfell, and only a few days after the battle, food and supplies started to arrive from towns and cities further South.

 

And with them had come the lords and lordlings, who’d promptly started to follow around Arya and Sansa.

 

Gendry swung his hammer even more forcefully.

 

It wasn’t that he felt inferior to them, not anymore. Or that he thought Arya would even grace them with a second glance. But seeing them swarm around her earlier tonight had made his blood boil and his appetite go out of the window. Which was why he was now standing in the forge in the late evening, slowly deforming the sword he was supposed to fix with his blows.

 

“I’m sure Ser Davos will be happy to have a hook rather than a sword. It’s not like he enjoys using his weapons in the first place.”

 

He didn’t startle at Arya’s cool voice. Even though she snuck up on him as a rule these days, it never surprised him when she suddenly showed up around him.

 

Gendry didn’t look at her and just kept working.

 

“The feast already over, Princess?” he asked as he brought down his hammer.

 

“Don’t call me that.” The tone of her voice made him pause to look at her. There was none of the usual playfulness in her reply. Instead, she sounded hurt and frustrated, and while she kept her usual cool mask, he could see those emotions reflected underneath.

  
Arya dropped a full wineskin on one of the work benches next to her.

 

“Everyone keeps calling me that. ‘The Princess That Was Promised’. ‘The Saviour of the Seven Kingdom’. But that’s not me. I’m just Arya Stark from Winterfell.” She fixed him with a stern gaze. “Don’t call me that,” she repeated, but it sounded more like a plea than a command.

 

Gendry nodded imperceptibly and turned back to the sword. Arya was right. The blade looked more like a sickle than a sword.

 

“Party over then?” he asked again, wondering if he should just give up on the sword tonight.

 

“No,” Arya replied evenly. She took a few cat-like steps towards him.  

 

“So why aren’t you there?” Gendry asked as he took the sword from the table to quench it in the slack tub. There really was no point in working on it anymore tonight.

 

The water hissed as it met the hot iron.

 

“Why aren’t you?” Arya shot back as she slowly moved even closer to him.

 

“Not in the mood,” Gendry replied.

 

“Me neither.” Arya had come to a stop right in front of him.

 

“What about your guests?” Gendry asked as he looked down on her.

 

“You mean the people who refused to come to our aid when we asked them to, but now that the battle is won fall over themselves to get in our favour?” Arya asked, arching an eyebrow. Then she turned and walked back to the bench where she’d left the wineskin. She opened it and took a sip before fixing Gendry with an impenetrable stare.

 

“I don’t care about our guests. I don’t care about the feast. What I want is to spend the first evening of peace in weeks in actual peace.”

 

She held the wineskin out to him.

 

 

 

Hours later, they were sitting on Gendry’s make-shift bed in the small loft in the forge’s ceiling that was used for storing ore and more recently, dragon glass. Unlike many of the other rooms in Winterfell that didn’t belong to the higher-ranking nobles, it never got cold in the forge.

 

Between kisses and touches and passing the wineskin amongst them, they finally told the other what had happened since Gendry had been sold. 

 

“Does that scare you?” Arya finally asked after she’d told him about becoming a Faceless Man.

 

Gendry thought for a second but then shook his head.

 

“No,” he said simply and truthfully.

 

“It scares most people. Sansa, Jon… they don’t say it, but I can see it in their eyes,” Arya added pensively.

 

“I guess I’m not most people then,” Gendry replied drily and took another sip from the wineskin.

 

Arya stared at him, her eyes suddenly full of emotion.

 

“No, you’re not,” she said softly.

 

Gendry slowly bowed his head and took another sip.

 

Arya was still staring at him and he looked straight back at her.

 

“I love you, too. I know I didn’t say it, but I do,” she suddenly stated.

 

At her words, Gendry noticed two things. For one, warmth spread through his whole body and seemed to reach all the way to the tips of his hands and even his feet. But more importantly, there truly was no surprise in him at what she was saying.  

 

He smiled slowly and nodded.

 

“I know,” he replied quietly. He pulled her close and pressed a firm kiss on her lips.

“I know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
